Antonio Banderas: Chávez ideas will solve US crisis

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas surprised CNN viewers when he criticized US President Barack Obama and suggested Europe and the US should apply the same economic policies as Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez.

During his talk with Spanish journalist Ana Pastor, Banderas was asked several questions about the current financial crisis and possible solutions to it.

The Malaga-born star pointed the finger of blame at “the markets, the lobbies, the big corporations” and suggested they didn’t have to take responsibility when countries and governments had problems.

“We’re not being governed by the people we voted for,” he told Pastor.

“How do you put a stop to that?” she asked.

“You break it like Chávez did in his day, you get all these big corporations and you nationalize them,” answered Banderas in the midst of a deafening silence.

“There was no other way out,” he added.

The Hollywood actor also criticized the US’s President Obama for not fullfilling his promises during his two terms in office and succumbing to the pressure of big business and financial markets.

Banderas: You get the sense lately that, possibly, in the whole world, we are not being governed by the people we voted for.

Pastor: Above them, there is something else.

Banderas: Of course.

Pastor: The markets.

Banderas: The markets, the lobbies, the corporations– there is a lot of hustle there. And, on top of that, people who do not have to show their face to take responsibility for what happens later in governments, in countries.

Pastor: But there is also consent, no? It forms part of the system, the inertia you were talking about. How do you break that inertia?

Banderas: You break it like Chavez did in his time. You say, ‘the topic is over. I’m taking all these corporations and nationalizing them.’ Where is there any other exit?

In a time when we have to stand up, a post-democratic era, because really, you listen to Obama during his first campaign for legislature, even his second, and you think– people were saying, ‘this is going to change.’ And I said ‘no, no, no, because he is going to encounter reality.’ And he faced the reality of the markets.